MAAPPS Theses and Dissertationshttp://hdl.handle.net/2429/391402015-08-02T22:16:22Z2015-08-02T22:16:22ZIslamic religiosity, revolution, and state violence in southwest China : the 1975 Shadian massacre (Issued:2013-04-18; Copyright:2013)Wang, Xianhttp://hdl.handle.net/2429/442922013-04-19T09:14:37Z2013-04-18T00:00:00ZThe 1975 Shadian conflict was the largest religious rebellion of the Cultural Revolution, however, its political and social impacts have been neglected by both mainstream western scholars and the Chinese state-sponsored historical account. The event also has remained a controversial issue in China, in Yunnan, and of course in Shadian itself. The unresolved questions of the Shadian massacre and the inability of the Chinese government and local community to come to resolution are the focus of this thesis. By stressing the agency of the Shadian villagers and focusing on the interactions between the Shadian villagers and local authorities, it seeks to explain why the conflict between the Shadian Muslims and the government has persisted, even after the CCP redressed the massacre in 1979 and has changed its religious policies in order to cultivate Islamic revival in today’s Yunnan.
Although the communist party-state has aimed to strengthen the socio-political stability of China by undertaking state-sponsored projects, such as rebuilding mosques, opening Islamic schools and so forth, to encourage public practice of Islam in Shadian; it maintains the Cultural Revolution-period mentality (radical secularism and atheism) and continues to deny Islamic religion as the very fundamental virtue that shapes the way the Shadian Muslims understand their religious—Muslim (rather than ethnic—the Hui) identities and the way in which they interact with the communist state. The conflicts and struggles between the Shadian Muslims and the CCP government in the Mao and the post-Mao period reflect the constant power dynamics between the local authorities’ denial of the religious centrality of Islam and the determination of Shadian villagers to define their ethnic identities based on Islam. While the CCP denies the religious motivation of the Shadian Muslim’s resistance by constantly regarding the villagers as reactionaries who always intended to make a disturbance, the Shadian villagers continues to emphasize their Muslim identities by regarding their resistance against the local authorities as religiously glorious and just, meaningful in just the sense that Geertz suggested. As a result, down to today, the mutual understanding between the CCP authorities and the Muslim communities therefore has not been established.
2013-04-18T00:00:00ZSouth Korea's developmentalism and contemporary telecommunications industry (1990s to the present) : what changed, what remains the same and why? (Issued:2013-01-22; Copyright:2013)KIM, Marie Kangyeonhttp://hdl.handle.net/2429/438602013-08-07T22:01:20Z2013-01-22T00:00:00ZThis paper seeks to explicate the diminishing significance of South Korea’s “industrial policy practices” in the context of that country’s economic development, using the telecommunications industry during the period 1990 – the present as a case study. Drawing upon the work of scholars like Peter Evans and Meredith Woo-Cummings of the Institutional School and Martin Hart-Landberg, who is associated with Historical Structuralism, I shall examine the idealistic and pragmatic/political components underpinning South Korea’s developmental culture, embodied in the so-called Korean Developmental state. This paper acknowledges the “nationalistic” vision informing “Korean Developmentalism” and its influence on contemporary policymaking in IT-related industries throughout the 1990s and continuing up to the present. It also examines the decline in state autonomy in the area of policymaking due to political realignment (among state, private and foreign capital in the context of local policymaking) and loss of bureaucratic efficacy (due to the lack of organizational coherence) and the diminishing relevance of the state’s “strategic” vision in the eyes of local private capital throughout the 1990s and continuing through to the present.
Two sets of empirical cases are examined here with a view to illustrating the challenges facing “strategic policymaking” during different periods. The first two pertain to the liberalization process in telecommunications markets (early 1990s-mid 1990s) and the 1994 policy of standardizing network technology in the domestic 2G market. Next, I shift my focus to examining the strategic policymaking process during the post-financial crisis (1997-1998) and post-WTO (1997) periods. First, I examine Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC)’s failure to groom “national champions” in the service sector in the context of the 2001-2003 M&A bidding war over Hanaro between AIG- Newbridge Capital and LG. Finally, this paper draws attention to another MIC policy setback during the period extending from the early 2000s through to the mid 2000s: the failure to coordinate network technology in the 3G mobile market owing to inability on the part of MIC to persuade local service providers to adopt its choice of technology.
2013-01-22T00:00:00ZSmall power : Mongolia's democratization and foreign policy objectives (Issued:2012-12-19; Copyright:2012)Miliate, Brandon Josephhttp://hdl.handle.net/2429/437142013-08-07T22:01:19Z2012-12-19T00:00:00ZSmall states are in a unique position, where they cannot hope to meet their foreign policy and security objectives through hard power. Rather, small states must balance against large neighbors via more subtle and nuanced ways. Through a critique of soft power, the author presents a new analytical framework for understanding small power and new criteria for defining “smallness” in today’s international system. Small power attempts to explain small state foreign policy decision-making and the role that “attractiveness” plays in their relations with larger states. One potential source of small power- democratic governance- is explored through a detailed look at the Mongolian model of democratization as a foreign policy tool in its “third neighbor policy”. Successful democratic transitions in small states can attract more security-related, economic, and institutional support from leading democratic countries than their small size might initially suggest.
2012-12-19T00:00:00ZStates and societies in the digital arena : ICT, state capacity, and political change in Asia (Issued:2012-09-19; Copyright:2012)Wand, Itayhttp://hdl.handle.net/2429/432342013-08-07T22:01:07Z2012-09-19T00:00:00ZHow does adoption of information communication technology (ICT) alter the balance of power between state and society in Asia? There is no question that these tools – the Internet, mobile phones, and social media – are transforming the political communications landscape across the region. Since political science views power as zero-sum, a central question is how its distribution is altered between digitally-strengthened states and digitally-empowered societal actors. On the one hand, societal actors are empowered through increased information access and dissemination, as well as decreased costs of mobilization and organization. At the same time, the state's digital capacity is greatly enhanced through increased information collection, monitoring, and control. This study hypothesizes that adoption of ICT in Asian states empowers societal actors over time enhancing non-electoral democratic processes subject to regime legitimacy and the digital state capacity governments build and apply. It first develops a theory for how ICT empowers both societal actors and states before testing this across Asian states through a quantitative analysis. The results suggest that Asian state policy determines whether and how ICT empowers societal actors and net political change. It then develops this policy concept through the lens of digital state capacity - how states control and manage digital information. Finally it conducts a qualitative analysis for China on the interaction of ICT adoption, regime legitimacy, and digital state capacity policy to determine net political change. The results demonstrate that while ICT adoption has strengthened the Chinese state through digital state capacity this has come at the loss of state control over a range of political issues. For these issues, the net result in China has been empowered-societal actors and enhanced transparency and accountability.
2012-09-19T00:00:00Z